DOAJ has launched the DOAJ Best Practice Guide.

The Guide is a web resource that provides selection criteria, resources and tools for the identification of reputable open access journals to support researchers, publishers and librarians in their search of best practice and transparency standards. It is also an attempt to collect discussions about open access to publications and its development. It is developed by, and updated regularly by, the DOAJ team based on existing and new information.

The Guide complements the work of the DOAJ Ambassadors as well as academics, librarians and publishers worldwide. Based on the information provided on the For Publishers page on the DOAJ website and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, the Guide aims to do the following:

  • Highlight issues surrounding questionable publishing practices;
  • Provide a checklist of criteria to help identify questionable publishers based on guidelines for editors working with applications to DOAJ;
  • Identify other tools that assist in making informed decisions on where to submit articles for publication. based on the ThinkCheckSubmit initiative;
  • Contain case studies and examples gathered by DOAJ over 13 years of operation.
Initial work with the Best Practice Guide was funded by IDRC  as part of the Ambassadors’ programme. If you know of other resources that should be included in the Guide, then do please contact us or leave a comment here.

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6 Comments

    1. Hi Katrina,

      Thanks for writing. The URL works for us but we have had reports from Germany of it not working. Where in the world are you? We may need to do some DNS work.

      Regarding the https://doaj.org/bestpractice URL: this is a page dedicated to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice, a joint statement published by COPE, WAME, OASPA and DOAJ. The DOAJ Best Practice Guide is a collection of resources curated to help authors, researchers, editors and librarians make informed choices about open access and open access publishing. The Principles of Transparency and Best Practice is one item in this collection.

      I hope that helps,

      Best wishes
      Dom Mitchell,
      DOAJ Operations Manager